Between rootlessness and unquiet, Grace Kwan’s debut collection of poems, The Sacred Heart Motel, visits the dim private experience of lovers, strangers, visitors, and migrants without reservation or a master key. It is only fitting that the table of contents is entitled “directory”, for at the heart of the collection everything remains vacant – waiting to be punctured by nostalgia, memories, and reflections. The partition of the irrecoverable moments of unowned experience allows the narration to slip away through fire escapes, in and out of memories, without being touched or touching.
“listen; read because
beauty was once a country
I belonged to now I’m a migrant
Placeless and still hovering
on the limn trying on wages
radium and high heels as a second language”
It is the rootlessness of each passing moment that rebounds from a seemingly refractory world, in which the cadenced becomes audible only through reflection. Peering into nights lit by a single spark, with “ this inability to spectate”, every vacancy becomes occupied, but for a moment, by the fertile and fleeting imagination. The collection becomes an homage to the ineffable passions that cannot be embraced; but only yearned and longed for in the “ Privacy and sanctuary”, of The Sacred Heart Motel.
“Machines breathed night into your heart below
the hospital bed through time and fire to
the other side of the globe yesterday
Where my body flew out of bed and in
its pale gown swayed gently down the empty streets”
The transience of changing places and perceptions allows many unsleeping spirits to pass through the work like some sort of dream-catcher, allowing Kwan to abandon themself in their non-commitment to a single place. The Sacred Heart Motel, is not one unmistakable place, perhaps with a flickering roadside ‘No Vacancy’ sign or a visitors book full of worldly signatures, but a current cut deep into the blindness that serves to bring a homeward direction its foundation back.
